IN THE MAGAZINES
Mandler, Peter & Morton, Brian
Philippine Human Rights Update, published by the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines, 214 N. Domingo St. Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines. The U.S. news media, which seem...
...Citing the statement of the Israeli government that the "situation in Judea, Samaria and Gaza had 387 returned to normal" after a wave of unrest, the editors said they were presenting the calendar so that "we can learn something of what their 'normality' means...
...The Prevention of Terrorism ordinance has been used in the past to shut down publications in the occupied territories, but this is the first time it's been brought to bear against a publication staffed by Israeli Jews and operating within the pre-1967 borders...
...I heard of News From Within only after it became illegal...
...The magazine is put out by the Alternative Information Center, a small organization sympathetic to Palestinian nationalism, staffed by Jews and Arabs...
...Each day, they...
...I've seen three issues...
...The lead article of the January 26th, 1987 issue gives a good idea of what the magazine is about...
...in al-Aydeh refugee camp, students' homes are raided, "with no reason given...
...The information . . . they distributed [was] always interesting...
...What Britain needs now, more even than in 1964, is "a centralizing force capable of regulating and counteracting the spontaneous molecular movements of the market": either a strong bureaucracy (as in France) or strong investment banks (as in Germany) or both (as in Japan...
...Often enough, News from Within does indulge in lurid rhetoric: it bristles with ritualistic comparisons of Israel and South Africa, which accomplish nothing except to inflame an already difficult subject...
...On the 21st, the managing editor of Al Fajr is interrogated after the publication of an interview with Yasser Arafat: the interview violated the Prevention of Terrorism law, which forbids expression of sympathy for illegal organizations such as the PLO...
...Fortified by a mixture of old Marxism and new structuralism, Anderson had the confidence to unfold all of modern history like an accordion from a few basic premises...
...It is not surprising to see starving children eat spoiled bread and fruits from the garbage...
...The organization that publishes this Update has been nominated for a Nobel Prize for its work on behalf of human rights...
...According to an excerpt from an article in HaAretz, the closing of the center has been protested by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel...
...This article is all the more disturbing in that it isn't the least bit lurid: it simply documents the constant tensions inevitable in a state of military occupation, even during periods of "normality...
...and it hasn't even tried to do this...
...The October 15/November 14, 1986 issue featured an article on "Smokey Mountain," a Manila shantytown where almost 20,000 people live alongside a huge garbage dump: The residents' lives depend on the garbage...
...This is a small magazine with a homemade look, combining articles on Israeli politics with information about the human rights situation in the occupied territories...
...Warshawsky has been charged with several offenses under the Prevention of Terrorism ordinance...
...Five of those arrested were released within two days...
...news media, which seem to take their intellectual inspiration from People magazine, have focused almost exclusively on Corazon Aquino in their coverage of the Philippines...
...On the 18th, a curfew is imposed on Gaza City after a Molotov cocktail is thrown at an Israeli vehicle...
...The problem was that the topics were often taken from the depths of security matters and it was very difficult to judge to what degree the center's reports had been established...
...Although Anderson gave himself over to rectifying the failure of Marxism in Britain, even in 1964 an alternative solution occurred to him: rectifying the failure of capitalism...
...In contrast, British capitalism has seemed to listen more attentively...
...The PHRU defines human rights to include more than freedom from violence: it admits to a "bias for the poor, deprived and oppressed...
...But her attempts to appease the military and her lack of a strategy for ending "foreign domination of the country's politics and business" elicit repeated expressions of concern...
...On the 20th, seventy families in Khan Yunis are informed that their houses are to be demolished because they were built without a license...
...Perry Anderson first propounded his theses on Britain's capitalist development in the pages of New Left Review in 1964...
...But democracies can presumably still distinguish between lurid rhetoric and terrorism...
...he was released on March 17th, on the equivalent of fifty thousand dollars' bail...
...This abortion triggered another (the emergence of an equally premature and thus supine proletariat), and another (no Marxist tradition either among the workers or among the alienated intellectuals), and another (a failure to develop organized capitalism in the twentieth century...
...Over the last twenty years, the socialist movement has disappointed him: the substitute proletariats overseas have ceased to agitate, Continental Marxism has dissipated, the British labor movement has fallen short...
...We in the U.S...
...Indeed, the right wing of the Conservative party was thinking along precisely the same lines as Anderson in the mid-tolate 1960s...
...It's a day-byday calendar of clashes between Arabs and Jews in the occupied territories during the previous week...
...Warshawsky has challenged the government to show that such ties exist, adding that "I am not a . . . sympathizer or close to the Popular Front and in dozens of articles . . . I have conducted an argument with its methods and ideology...
...News from Within, Alternative Information Center, P.O...
...still insists on fiscal "austerity...
...Accordingly, he offered his program for economic dynamism to "the dominant bloc" as well as to the socialist movement...
...Our government still presses for military solutions to social problems...
...A new issue of News from Within appeared on February 24th, in defiance of the suspension order...
...Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that, in his latest restatement of the "New Left Review theses," Anderson now directs the bulk of his prescriptive comments to the right...
...There's more, but you get the idea...
...It is of great doubt that security will benefit from this...
...his confidence in the ultimate triumph of proletarian Marxism had to be buoyed up by events somewhat further afield, in China, Cuba, and Vietnam...
...they are given a week to move their belongings...
...This is an important publication...
...Last February 16th, police closed down the center's office and arrested six members of its staff...
...These prescriptions are sensible enough: the only question is, what the hell are they doing in New Left Review...
...As an intellectual, Anderson naturally applied himself to supplying the intellectual deficit, busing into Britain boxloads of Gramsci and Althusser...
...In addition to publishing News from Within, the center provides information to Israeli and foreign journalists and runs a commercial printing press...
...On the 19th, Palestinians stone a car belonging to an Israeli religious school, and Israeli settlers fire on them in reprisal...
...Perry Anderson: "The Figures of Descent...
...The September 15/October 14, 1986 issue declares that despite Aquino's good intentions, "the country's human rights situation remained no different from Marcos' heydays...
...The closure was carried out without formal charges, as permitted by the 1948 Prevention of Terrorism ordinance...
...We congratulate ourselves on the part we played in their transition to democracy—and most of us don't even notice that we've still got our boot on their neck...
...On the same day, the occupation authorities issue a four-day closure order of an-Nahah University...
...For each British failure there was a Continental solution: "pure" capitalists in Germany, "pure" Marxists (both proletarian and intellectual) in France and Italy...
...This prompted Gideon Spiro, also of Al Hamishmar, to write: "Whoever thought that it was possible to continue forever in a situation of a military dictatorship for Arabs and democracy for Jews, this week received another blunt hint that it won't work...
...But if] the Alternative Information Center is actually shut down for good, the Israeli press will lose a peephole [on an area] which is very difficult to report on...
...New Left Review, 161 (Jan./Feb...
...As the trucks start to unload, people swarm around like flies, pushing, fighting, and elbowing each other for choice items...
...The center's director, Michael Warshawsky, was charged with rendering services to a terrorist organization...
...Consequently, there was no bourgeois revolution to speak of, and the bourgeoisie developed as a "subaltern" class...
...await the arrival of the garbage trucks...
...Under the Emergency Defense Regulations enacted by the British Mandatory Government in 1945 and still in force, all publications in Israel are subject to prior censorship...
...The rest of the issue is made up of comments about the case from the Israeli press...
...1987...
...The PHRU is by no means hostile to Aquino: it sees her as a sincere reformer whose freedom is drastically limited by the military and the U.S...
...Standing 388 Marx on his head, he argued that because capitalism emerged in Britain first, its subsequent development in Britain was not archetypal but exceptional...
...The international edition is wretchedly written and edited, but to complain too much about verbal barbarities would be a little shameful...
...It is definitely a loss for democracy...
...The government claims that some of the West Bank organizations for which the center provided typesetting services—a students' group, a women's group, and others—have ties to George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine...
...Box 165, West Jerusalem, Israel...
...Why not the Wall Street Journal, where fellow NLR editor Alexander Cockburn has already found a comfortable berth...
...Margaret Thatcher's mentor, Sir Keith Joseph, had also complained about Britain's historical inability to develop "a capitalist ruling class . . . a stable bourgeoisie" and since 1979 he and his fellow Conservatives have had an opportunity to do something about it...
...He showed an interest, too, in importing proletarian Marxism, but found little at hand even across the Channel...
...The result was "the present crisis," the 1960s warning signals of Britain's subsequent economic decline...
...Britain's "premature" capitalism was sponsored by landlords, not industrialists...
...bear a great deal of responsibility for the continuing misery in the Philippines...
...As disturbing as the murders themselves is the fact that none of the perpetrators—and none of those in the military who committed murders under the Marcos regime—have been brought to trial...
...From February 26 to September 30, 1986, the center received reports of 603 illegal arrests, 43 disappearances, 238 cases of torture, and 43 cases of "extra-judicial or extralegal killing with clear political motive...
...On the 17th, prisoners in Kfar Yuna jail go on a hunger strike demanding hot water, access to newspapers, adequate lighting, and so on...
...The association questioned the idea that News from Within could have endangered state security, since every issue of the magazine had been cleared by government censors...
...The issue also quoted Pinhas Inbari of the newspaper Al Hamishmar, organ of the left-Socialist party Mapam: The Alternative Information Center succeeded in drawing the attention of the Israeli and foreign press to the darker side of the West Bank...
...To establish his guilt under the ordinance, in any case, the government would have to show that Warshawsky knowingly aided an illegal organization...
...The lead article is a statement from the AIC, charging that the center was closed because of its efforts in behalf of the rights of Palestinian political prisoners and its success in challenging the Israeli Defense Force's "monopoly on the flow of information from the occupied territories...
...389...
...But though her ascension to the presidency really was a wonderful event, the human rights situation in the Philippines remains terrible...
Vol. 34 • July 1987 • No. 3
